


Something Wicked

by neko11lover



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neko11lover/pseuds/neko11lover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryoma is a God of Death, and he spends his first love planning his goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Wicked

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Written for iu_fanfiction’s 39th writing challenge, _My First Kill_ , and astraldrop11’s _anything but ordinary_. A little thing that came to me when I was thinking of a love story that was ‘anything but ordinary’. Probably an overused concept, too. Sorry about that. Oh, apologies for the embarrassing amount of fluff… I think. Edited a bit but still officially unbeta'd.

  
_By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes._ – Shakespeare, Macbeth

 

1

Ryoma realizes that he is her God of Death the moment he lays his eyes on her.

The first contact is always the trigger for them to remember, and it’s no earth-shattering moment of discovery: it just dawns in like lukewarm water creeping up his skin, covering him, and at the same time, opening his every senses to everything he’s never noticed before. Now, the world seems somehow clearer and everything seems to be in order.  Ryoma’s face turns grim.

So he calls out to the group of guys, with one of them brandishing a racket with a wrong grip inside a moving train.

“Yo, can’t you keep it down?”

He does it mostly out of annoyance, and he figures that she still has a lot of time left before he needs to reap.

 

2

It so happens that he’s born into a human life that isn’t much for socializing. He maintains a subtle distance from her, and observes her from afar. It doesn’t take much effort. He knows that whatever he does, or whatever she does, they’ll end up in the same road. He knows, too, that this job won’t be much of a handful. There are suicidal-types, and this one doesn’t quite fit the bill.

After all, God of Death he may be, he is still Echizen Ryoma and he’s just twelve. He loves tennis, and he wants to best everyone else in it, and if he isn’t playing tennis, he’d much prefer to spend time with his cat. These instincts remain strong, especially since he doesn’t have the need for his other, newly-surfaced self. They’ll more likely come a little stronger when her time comes. 

In any case, what he knows about Ryuzaki Sakuno is hardly anything worth mentioning. She’s sweet and kind, but a bit flaky. He had long noticed her discomfort around him, and has always wondered what brought it about (considering that they almost never talk), but he never asked. As for talents, what he’s sure about is that playing tennis isn’t one of them. 

What’s strange about her is how she makes Ryoma’s hands shake. Every time he sees her, his hands tremble a little (not bad enough to make him lose a game, but strong enough for him to notice). He doesn’t feel nervous or agitated, and he’s sure that it isn’t part of his other senses, as this is the first time it has happened.

His thoughts are cut off when Tezuka calls for a break. He turns around to the sound of Momoshiro calling him for a drink, when his eyes rest on the same person he’s been thinking about. She smiles at him shyly from behind the fences, before she runs back to her practice. When Ryoma looks down at his hands, the trembling is a little bit worse. He shrugs it off, and jogs to his upperclassman, the girl temporarily forgotten.

 

3

He leaves for America.

It does for a few tears and a few more claps on the back from his friends. Ryuzaki Sakuno had somehow, through the years, become one of them, albeit their relationship is more awkward compared to the rest. Some of his upperclassmen had thought they had something romantic going on, but Ryoma, young as he is, honestly felt it too uninteresting. 

(Not that Ryoma is ruling the possibility out completely. Falling in love with your target is completely normal, mostly because the God of Death lives his lifetime as a human being, susceptible to human feelings. A lot of them are even married, with children. But love --- _now_? He has fond feelings for her, but he feels the same way for his teammates, and for his friends.)

This departure is followed by many others, with their durations varying. Sometimes, he leaves only for a few weeks, sometimes, he doesn’t come back after years. During all the times he comes home, however, he makes it a point to be in contact with her, and to check up on how she’s doing. Their relationship remains platonic, and Ryoma decides that it’s for the best.

But that isn’t to say that things have remained the same.

 

This time, it’s been ten years since they’ve met. He tells other people, particularly Horio, Kato and Katsuo, and he guesses that Osakada will probably be there, too, to welcome him home. As always. He waits inside a café, where Horio has two years of patisserie training.

Ryuzaki comes first. His hands tremble and he feels a little hot around the collar when she shakes his hand, congratulating him on his recent win. While she talks, he flexes his fingers, trying to get the shaking out.

“Ah!” she exclaims, making him jump a little. She’s frowning slightly, and he feels somewhat alarmed. “Tomoka-chan says she can’t come today. She says to extend her apologies.” 

Ryoma raises an eyebrow. “Horio, too. So he gave me these gift certificates.” He places the pieces of paper on the table. As if on cue, his cellphone rings, and he reads the text message. “Apparently, both Kato and Katsuo are sick.”

Sakuno looks worried. “Oh my. Is a virus coming around?”

Ryoma sighs, and buries his face in a hand. From an open corner, he spots the rest of them, spying in ridiculous costumes consisting of trench coats and hats, right outside the café. He sighs for a second time, and looks at his companion. “I wouldn’t worry about them.”

Sakuno chuckles a little at that, before she picks up her cup of steaming coffee. Casually, she asks him, “When will you leave next, Ryoma-kun?” 

Images of Ryoma’s schedule book pop up in his head. Various matches and interviews were lined up for him, giving him no breaks until next spring. And that was just for local appearances. He still had to do a bit more traveling before he’s completely free. And so he surprises himself with his answer. 

“I’m staying for the time being.” 

By then, Ryoma realizes that her time is almost up. His eyes glaze over a bit, and his lids lower slightly. He sees a blur of his lashes against his field of vision, and his mind clouds over with a strange kind of clarity. Everything is clear, and he wishes he can look away, but it’s all around him, and there’s nowhere else to look. 

“Dinner tomorrow?” he asks, a little loudly. He smirks at her a little.

Her flustered ‘yes’ cues muffled victorious tittering on the side of their spies.

Later that night, Ryoma receives a text from Horio: ‘ _can’t believe it took you two a decade. ‘mada mada dane’ my ass’_. To which Ryoma replies: ‘ _shut up’._ He smiles as he presses ‘send’. 

The moment is fleeting, however, because a few minutes later, he starts penning his goodbye.

 

4 

They date for two years. It’s longer than Ryoma had expected. By that time, rumors have surfaced that Ryoma took the same path his father did. (Nanjiroh, in all his interviews during the first year, said the same thing: “I don’t give a damn what the brat does. I’m just glad he’s put himself out there. I want grandchildren, dammit.” Much to Ryoma’s annoyance.) He had settled them all by calling in a ‘break’. 

“This article says you’ve contracted a sexually-transmitted disease,” Sakuno reports, a wrinkle forming in her brows.

“Not true, of course,” Ryoma replies, in the process of taking off his jacket and hanging it on a chair. He’s been keeping an eye on her more closely now, careful not to set her off. He walks to the bed and sits next to her, taking one of the tabloids. He reads the title above a picture of some girl he doesn’t recognize beside his own. “’Sex change’.”

Sakuno giggles, and Ryoma reaches out and touches her cheek with a trembling hand. He feels a sense of emptiness at that moment, and wonders if she senses it, too, because she responds by looking at him curiously. He takes his hand back, and goes back to the tabloid. “It says here that I’ve renamed myself ‘Ryoka’.” 

Sakuno chooses that time to ask: “Do you ever miss tennis?”

“Of course.”

“Then why don’t you come back?” When he doesn’t reply, she presses on. “I won’t mind, you know. I-It’ll be like always. I’ll come to your games, and cheer you on. The way you come to my presentations.”

He doesn’t quite know how to answer it without lying to her, so instead, he presses his lips against hers. “I have more important things,” he murmurs, before kissing her again. He wonders what his twelve-year-old self would say. He wonders how things could’ve been different if he weren’t himself. “To do.”

Sakuno smiles, a little sadly, as she caresses his cheek. “You make it sound like I’m going to disappear if you look away.” 

_You won’t_ , Ryoma thinks, _because I’ll be looking at you when you do_. 

And then he’s against her, and soon, they’re a tangle of bodies and clothing on the bed, tied by messy kisses and clumsy hands everywhere. Sakuno laughs and says ‘It tickles!’ and Ryoma laughs back, and all of a sudden, he realizes that he’s been thinking in clichés. Not that he gives a damn, because he really does want the moment to last forever.

 

5 

She dies in an accident three days after their first night, and a month before Ryoma returns to America for his second debut.

Ryoma is there at the site he had orchestrated up to the last detail, watching at a vantage point on a building, detached yet completely immersed. His eyes are on it, and he drinks in everything – the way the car slams into her body, the way she falls on the concrete, the number of lacerations and broken bones. Her time of death. He feels the lukewarm coating slip off his being, and watches it slide off to her. He watches as it absorbs her soul, flickering a little, and then dissipating into thin air. The trembling stops, and so does the romance.

Ryoma realizes that he could have never been prepared. He still isn’t. And he’d known when the death would happen the moment they met. He feels that it’s unfair, but he realizes that he has it better than losing her without knowing where she’d go. 

“Good job,” comes a voice next to him, from a presence he hadn’t sensed.

It is Death. They stand side-by-side, watching the commotion below.

“Did you love her?”

Ryoma's mouth turns up a little on the corners.

The figure reaches out and Ryoma feels its cold hand on his shoulders. He knows that it understands the feeling of emptiness after a job is done, and it doesn’t get easier no matter how many kills one has done.

“Live on,” it says.

Ryoma nods, and the sensation disappears, and he is alone again. He turns around, hands in pockets, and does what he is told.

After all, that is a God of Death’s reward for his services. And at the same time, his punishment.

 

**FIN.**


End file.
